When the financial crash first hit, it was predicted that this would be a "middle-class recession", with professional, white-collar workers suffering the bulk of the employment losses. Politicians fretted about how Job Centres would cope with queues of venture capitalists and City lawyers, and agonised over the plight of "the squeezed middle" or the travails of poor old "alarm-clock Britain". It never seemed terribly credible.

When the middle class stop spending, it of course hits all those who depend on their largesse, from cleaners to waiters to people on the production line in a car factory. And it hits tax revenue. The most vulnerable are always the most vulnerable, by definition. And so it has come to pass.

Nevertheless, the character of this crisis is new and different. The most vulnerable are now so vulnerable that their ability to mount organised or unionised protest is largely curtailed. No surprises there. Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 in huge part because she vowed to stand up to the unions and take a hard line on strikers. (Rupert Murdoch's similar attitudes provided a media symbiosis, the depth and danger of which is only now being fully acknowledged.) Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown after him, were happy to retain union-busting legislation (and Murdoch-placation) throughout their rule.

Sure, last summer's English riots, triggered in Tottenham by the shooting dead by the police of unarmed suspect Mark Duggan, can be interpreted as a cry of pain or anger against the established order of things. But they had no specific political or economic goal, so they were easily dismissed as "pure criminality".

It's significant, though, that middle-class rioters were focused on as especially aberrant by the media and the judiciary, especially when one looks where we are now. Doctors – doctors! – are minded to go on strike, joining a growing middle-class rebellion.

The largest organised protests thus far have been over such aspirational matters as access to further and higher education. Occupy London Stock Exchange caused moral convulsions among, of all places, the higher echelons of the Church of England, while academics and experts went down to the Occupy camp's makeshift university to offer intellectual ballast.

Neoliberalism sought to rid the working class of militancy. Well, the working class may have been struck with a near-fatal blow. But militancy has survived.

In fact, when one considers the socio-economic grouping of this new set of medical strikers, one could even claim that militancy has prospered.

The British Medical Association, the doctors' union, has certainly made sure that its members prospered over recent years, particularly when negotiating new GPs contracts in the early 2000s. One of the BMA's negotiators, Dr Simon Fradd, later told the BBC that GPs were so stunned by the generosity of the terms offered for out-of-hours opt-out that they thought it was "a bit of a laugh". But they accepted them anyway, in 2004.

Doctors are hardly alone among professionals who made hay while the sun was shining, rather than mending the roof. They are hardly even chief among them. That dubious distinction goes to the bankers. And even they were not out of step with the zeitgeist. On the contrary, their manicured, high-octane ruthlessness personified the spirit of the age. They were the future – the future that has now arrived. Apparently, the next future will focus on manufacturing instead.

For three decades, though, manufacturing – too reliant in this country on horny-handed sons of toil who'd got above themselves – was out. There were less grandiose types abroad who could do that cheaper and with greater diligence. Middle-class values were in. A property-owning, shareholding, highly educated population would provide the capital for production in other countries, and provide all the sophisticated back-up services – finance, advertising, marketing, consultancy, retail – that obviated the need for dirty hands.

The Tories lost power in 1997 because people could see this grand scheme suited the few, but not a huge chunk of the many. New Labour may have looked mournful, and called those who were not catered for in this great new scheme "the socially excluded". But they stuck with the general wheeze, making some tweaks such as a minumum wage, tax credits and a focus on "lifting children out of poverty". The one sure way to lift children out of poverty is to lift adults out, but that doesn't have the sentimental mawkishness of Clinton Cards (now in administration itself). Now we are missing our child-poverty targets, and even the children of the affluent are living with their parents, and doing unpaid internships. What a lot has, or should have, been learned.

First, that the wealthy and educated are no more wise, and no more selfless in the wielding of their power than people with factory wages and manual skills. The unions, it was said, were bringing Britain to its knees. Those big-bang financiers who were going to replace and supercede manufacturing's wealth-creating capacity have actually got us right down into that prayerful position. Britain was once "the sick man of Europe". Now, all of Europe is sick.

Second, a developed nation that organises itself to suit the sort of population it thinks it would like to have, rather than the one it does, is inevitably going to run into problems. Thatcher and Blair both governed as if it were only worth catering to people who wanted for themselves and their families some pale version of what Thatcher and Blair wanted for themselves and their families. Much emphasis was placed on getting huge swathes of the population into higher education. Less was placed on the skills and jobs that would be needed by those who were not remotely academic, and who stayed home. That's the root of regional disparity and welfare dependency right there. You can't change people that much. You have to try to accept them as they are, and offer them the help they need.

Third, that globalisation is not the tidy solution it was touted as being. Workers abroad can't clean the office loo. Workers abroad can't pick English apples. Workers abroad can't labour on London building sites. Let's be honest – workers abroad can't even answer phones in call centres as well as it was thought they would be able to. Allow the global market to set wage rates and you get people travelling to seek wages that seem high by their local standards. You also get locals who don't work because wages don't cover the necessities of the aspirational life that is the idealised option here.

The greatest paradox of all is that the very people this country was supposedly rearranged to suit – the middle classes – are the only ones left with the wherewithal to object as this society fashioned with them – us – in mind starts falling apart. And of course, the really rich remain untouchable – having seen off the proletariat, they're preparing to see of the bourgeoisie as well.

We did socialism. We did capitalism. Now, as social democracy's moment has arrived, the political party that's supposed to champion it, the Lib Dems, is in power with the Conservatives. Nick Clegg's Lib Dems are exhausted, confused, poorly led and on the ropes. But Jon Cruddas, recently appointed to lead Labour's policy review, at least has the advantage of knowing very, very well, what doesn't work. There is hope.